Links to Consider, 2/22

Lorenzo Warby on the lie of equalitarianism; Nancy Folbre on care services and GDP; Noah Smith on reading classic philosophers; Alice Evans on South Korea

Lorenzo Warby argues that progressivism is committed to defending the false proposition that there are not inherent differences between groups.

Because the equalitarian thesis is false, a free society will generate social patterns that contradict the equal outcomes it demands. It will produce information that blatantly contradicts what it claims is so, hence the need for regimes of falsehoods, lies, censorship, and intimidation.

Equalitarianism is, however, very simplifying: if outcomes are unequal, there must have been injustice. This is an analysis any midwit can do, with maximum self-righteousness. Moreover, as citizens’ free choices created this blatant injustice, clearly resources and control have to be handed to said self-righteous midwits.

Equalitarian progressivism creates a moral perfectionism that enables adherents to critique everything and take responsibility for nothing, all with maximum self-righteousness.

Because equalitarianism is untrue, treating people as individuals, rather than members of groups, does not lead to the outcomes that equalitarianism demands. So progressives reject treating people as individuals. And much else follows that is harmful.

Nancy Folbre writes,

conventional estimates of economic growth are overstated when they do not account for declines in hours of unpaid work associated with increases in women’s paid employment

Pointer from Timothy Taylor. Suppose that last year I cared for my child and you cared for your child, with neither of us being paid. Then this year you paid me to care for your child and I paid you to care for my child. The same work was done, but measured GDP went up.

Most people would say that GDP should measure production, so that GDP should not go up. I say that GDP should measure economic activity, and economic activity (paid for in the market) did go up. I think of Folbre and others as searching for God’s perspective on the economy. God only knows what is the value of care services provided outside of the market.

Noah Smith writes,

most physics students don’t go back and read Newton or Maxwell or Faraday or Kelvin, or even Einstein. But most philosophy students will read at least a few of the old classic thinkers, and often quite a lot. Why the difference?

My view is that the difference comes from summarizability. Newton’s laws of motion can be fully and easily understood without reading Newton

I think that as questions become settled, they move out of philosophy. Philosophy is the residual where questions remain unsettled. People might still care about what Aristotle has to say about unresolved questions, say in ethics or political theory; but on the questions about matter and motion that have been settled by modern physics, you would only read Aristotle as a historical curiosity.

I would rather read a summary of an important philosopher than go back to the original. If a summary of Hegel does not suffice, that is because one of the unsettled questions is what the heck Hegel was trying to say. That is Hegel’s problem, not mine.

Alice Evans writes,

South Korea now has the same income inequality as the U.K, but far more conspicuous consumption. It is the world leader for spending on luxury goods, male cosmetics, plastic surgery and private education. Culture also matters. Koreans care immensely about wider social approval, as I’ve learnt through my own research in Seoul. A culture of peer comparison spurs status competition and class anxieties.

Maybe a more diverse society would have a wider variety of status markers, so that the competition in these particular areas would be less intense. Or, channeling Rob Henderson, maybe we should have a competition to make children feel welcome and loved.

substacks referenced above:

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"Privilege and Anxiety" by Hagen Koo (Review)

At least five interesting things to start your week (#28)

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Equalitarianism is morally and socially deranging